Shortly before his death in September 1989, Sir Ronald Syme approved the selection and publication of these fifty-nine papers.

Volume VI, composed of previously published articles and reviews, offers a splendid cross-section of Syme's interests: the Roman revolution; the Augustan aristocracy; Tacitus and Sallust; historical geography; the Roman army; a variety of classical authors (Horace, Ovid, Strabo, Seneca, Justin, the Historia Augusta); the Emperor Hadrian; colonial elites; historiography, ancient and modern; and Roman political thought and society.

Volume VII consists of twelve unpublished papers (originally intended to form part of a separate book, `Pliny and Italia Transpadana'), in which the two Plinies and their age are put under searching scrutiny. It is rounded off by a Latin text purporting to derive from a lost book of Tacitus' Histories (duly equipped with commentary); and by an Index to both volumes.